Recent graduate of Makers Academy, and Junior Full Stack Developer after a lockdown decision to commit to building a set of technical skills that would let me delve deeper into the systems I work with, understand them and help make them better. Having taken a winding path from science through sales to statistics, I'm a Consummate data-wrangler looking for fertile ground to grow my skillbase into something that can really help people, and a way out of an unintended plant metaphor. Always excited to discover better ways to do things, even more excited to make those things do themselves.
I'm happiest when I can work closely with stakeholders in a project as I'm deeply invested in how my engineering will impact users. I'd love to work for any organisation whose products or services improve peoples lives, and I take pride in working to ensure that the teams I am a part of are happier and more productive than I found them.
I've gathered a wide communication skill base spanning formal academic and professional presentation, public science communication, charity outreach, client relations and technical sales. While I've so far dodged a formal career in education I've found reknown as an empathetic, genial and above all effective conduit for information in and outside of a business. I credit this broad background for my consistently positive feedback as a pair programming partner and team member at Makers, most notably working on Votewatch where I managed to unite the team around developing for mobile for the first time - a dilemma while planning the scope of the project. Having taken an evening at the start of our first sprint to find us a framework to work with and deploy from (React Native and Expo) I was able to walk the team through the packages from trepidation to enthusiasm the next morning.
I've always been obsessed with how to prove the intuitions and hunches that crop up after working with a system, whether just patterns in a dataset or undocumented behaviours in a system. My academic work gave me a set of statistical tools and expectations of rigor in checking 'common sense' that I've applied at ever since - from controlling for weather in measuring monthly sales data to removing leading questions in social worker feedback forms I can't help but look for the unexpected and unintended in my work. These instincts have already shone in my programming, where they have led me to identify bugs that appeared at first glance to be components passing stringent test coverage.
| Name | Description | Tech/tools |
|---|---|---|
| Votewatch | An iOS & Android app aimed at making UK politics more transparent leveraging the House of Commons API | React Native, Expo, Sequelize, Express, Node.JS |
Freelance web dev (12/22 to present) LegalLib AI (01/23)
- Consulted for product planning stages and drafted an engineering specification to achieve the client's product goals.
- Wrote alpha client using Yeoman to connect ChatGPT to a JS-based MS Word add-in.
- A highly selective 16-week full stack bootcamp that aims to make industry-ready junior devs.
- TDD: From the ground up I've learned to code behaviour-first and keep the debug loop as tight as possible. (RSpec, Jest, Cypress)
- OOD and SOLID principles: An emphasis on creating readable code, easily modified.
- Language-agnostic learning: Pivoting from Ruby to JavaScript midway through the course we were led through the process of self-learning new languages and frameworks at short notice to use the best tool for the task at hand.
- Agile: Developing & practising an Agile workflow on team projects using iterative planning, building a ticketing framework and adjusting team goals to meet changing product specs and team needs. (Trello, Miro)
- Collaborative engineering: The course approached nearly 50% pair programming and team projects, and has led me to the realisation that I do all of my best work when I do it outside of my own head.
- Self-directed learning: How rather than what to learn is the hallmark of Makers, and the guidance on goal-setting, progress monitoring and reflection has been the stand-out most valuable lesson in assimilating new tech.
Cornwall Council (01/19 to 07/22)
Data Officer
- Conducted statistical analysis of social care data for statutory return to gov. agencies and internal strategy - turning SQL queries into business insight.
- Evaluated data-gathering methodology and KPIs for task fitness.
- Presented analyses to senior leadership and inspection teams.
Ann's Cottage Falmouth (03/15 to 12/18)
Sales
- Technical sales and customer education for specialist hardware
- General customer service and complaints handling
- Responsible for sales and product training for new staff
Cornwall Wildlife Trust (05/15 to 12/15)
Membership Officer
- Membership sales at various public events
- Public outreach and wildlife conservation education
- Sole responsibility for targeted events
Belmont Property Management Ltd (06/14 to 01/15) Trainee Property Manager
- Handled client maintenance requests and coordinated contractors in response
- Organised Management Company meetings
- Acquired and interpreted archived legal material to solve client disputes
Treliske Hospital, Truro (02/11 to 07/11) Medical Laboratory Assistant
- Handled and processed sensitive patient information and valuable medical samples.
- Coordinated patient data collation from GP surgeries across Cornwall.
- Maintained and documented controlled laboratory environment.
University of Regina, Saskatchewan (06/10 to 02/11) Research Assistant
- Responsible for in-field data collection, including tracking of tagged animals using RF telemetry.
- Managed fieldwork logistics and communication.
- Processed, analyzed field data for presentation.
- PGC Applied Ecology
- Merit
- BSc Biology, focus on behaviour and parisitology
- 2:1
- Award for outstanding Year in Industry Project - Bat Telemetry with the University of Regina, Saskatchewan
- Training for my first ultramarathon for summer 2023 - the Classic Quarter!
- Recent cycling convert - I managed all 100 miles of Ride London '22!
- Although I'm still looking for a boat in Bristol, I'm a storied dinghy sailor and peaked (so far!) representing Team GB in the Hobie Dragoon (Worlds 2004 Duinbergen: 3rd, Euros 2005 Heiligenhafen: 1st)
- Incurable trivia hound. Please ask me about asteroid mining, or cognition in corvids. Or how submarines produced game theory, or about car-dependent infastructure, or abiogenesis, or-